Welcome to the AIN conference, we have no idea what this conference will be about – let’s make it up.
There is a little more too it than that, but that is what this conference is. It is an improvised conference. The participants create deliver and participate in the program but it is made up each day. We all knew ahead of time and people still prepared material to present, but there was no official program schedule created.
The concept is structured and has rules and is called Open Space. It is based on the idea that the best part of many conferences is the coffee breaks where great conversations take place and tries to make the conference all coffee breaks.
It is particularly intriguing for improvisers who love to life in the moment and create on the fly. There can be a slight downside in that it can tend to have a lack of flow in some sessions because the prep work is not there, but it can also be inspirational and capture what is current and interesting to many people.
And, if it’s not good – the law of two feet requires that you get up and leave if you feel like you don’t want to be there anymore. So the social contract of not being rude by leaving the middle is changed. It can be a big relief when it’s just nor for you.
So, would you come to a conference if you knew there was no program?
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Rich Cox, Business and Performance Coach, combines years of experience in business, finance and technology with his extensive work in leadership communication and improvisational theater. Rich teaches innovation and leadership communication with organizations worldwide including improvImpact, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Google, Microsoft, Visa, Cisco, the Bravo television network and the Oracle Foundation. Rich speaks on Applied Improv around the world and is the co-founder of ImprovNotebook.com and coaches and performs improv with BATS Improv, Fully Improvised and Over The Moon And Under The Bed. Prior to coaching, Rich was a CEO, VP of Marketing, Marketing Consultant and Engineer and walked from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2003. Rich lives with his two dogs in San Francisco.  Follow Rich on twitter!
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Hey Rich – not only would I come to an open space conference, these days it’s the ONLY sort I’ll go to
No longer am I prepared to spend good money to sit in rows and be subjected to bad powerpoint and some dude who someone else has deemed I should listen to. All the great speakers are on YouTube and TED – so for me the value for money in attending any conference is around connections and emergence. For that I’m willing to forego pre-prepared workshops (in the same way as I’m prepared to go with whatever emerges in an improv show instead of the well-rehearsed play), even the occasional howler – all worth it for the gems, the surprises, the discoveries and the self-organising way of being that enables serendipity and discovery. But you knew that already 
Cheers, Viv
Rich,
I’ll basically pitch in with Viv here – while I will go to traditional conferences, I much prefer the Open Space / unconference / Barcamp approach. It’s more useful in terms of choice – but most useful to me is the “doing, not talking” approach which it tends to foster, with presentations turning into workshops and vice versa.
So yes, it’s unconference all the way for me.
Adam